The YouTube team at Google is building upon the existing ability to download video for offline viewing – currently available for those viewing content in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. The brand new app, YouTube Go, has been built from scratch to focus on delivering video over slow or inconsistent bandwidth.

Johanna Wright, vice president of product management at YouTube, said: "The app is designed to be offline first and work even when there's low or no connectivity."

New features include a preview mode to save time and data by seeing a small clip before loading or saving the entire video. Users will also be able to share videos with nearby friends without using any data or even being online. And for the data conscious it will be possible to see how much data it will “cost” to stream or save at a particular resolution.

YouTube Go is being launched first in India and is expected to roll out to other regions early next year.

youtube.googleblog.com/2016/09/youtube-go-youtube-reimagined-for-next.html